


What Matters

by Observantalienscribbler



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Observantalienscribbler/pseuds/Observantalienscribbler
Summary: Set in the universe of Tumblr's Daforge Cadet AU, drawn by @Moosopp on twitter, before the events of the comic. Lore is determined to get he and his brothers noticed. Data thinks he should give it up before they’re noticed for the wrong reasons. If this birthday gets any worse, Geordi is going to scream. Even in our progressive and pure twenty-fourth century, assholes are everywhere.  Data/Geordi, Tasha/Deanna. Rated T for swearing.





	

“Today’s the day, boys. I can feel it. February’s almost over, everyone’s settled in their classes; it’s perfect!” 

Lore continued to rattle off his typical spiel, pacing the floor of he and his brothers’ dorm. 

Data was currently zipping their big brother B4’s uniform jacket. He had only joined them minutes ago when he found them loitering around, not yet ready for school minutes before the first bell would ring. He wasn’t concerned with Lore’s Plot of the Day.

“The day for what, Lore?” B4 asked. He always had more genuine curiosity in store for Lore than Data did. 

“The day we get these morons to accept us. The day we start climbing the social ladder around here and blending into society like Father wanted.”

“Organic beings here do not accept us, Lore,” Data said. “They never have and likely never will.” 

B4 frowned at him. “The people here can be nice. Are you still upset no one showed up to your birthday party?” 

Data did not bother pointing out, for the millionth time, that he could not be upset. 

“As I recall, only you showed up to that party, B4. You neglected to invite anyone, including Lore and myself.” 

“And that’s my fault,” B4 said. “You can’t hold that against the entire student body forever.”

“That is not what I am-“

“Knowing Data, he’ll never get over it, B,” Lore cut in, pulling the now neatly-dressed B4 up and to his side. “Don’t let him drag you down. Wouldn’t you like more friends around here? That’s all I’m suggesting.” 

“Friends are fun…” B4 mumbled. 

“Do not get his hopes up, Lore,” Data said, gathering his books calmly from behind them. “I speak based on objective observation. This is our fourth semester on campus. I would never imply are not decent beings attending this school. The average person judges our very existence. We are only allowed to live three to a dorm because no one else wanted to room with an android. No one who wishes to know us better would risk their reputation to.” 

B4 was sobered. Lore glared. 

“We can’t stay alone forever, Data.”

“We are not alone. We have each other,” Data pointed out. “I, personally, do not need other companionship.” 

“Oh, please. Yes you do.” 

“I am going to class, as you should,” Data announced, abruptly leaving the room.

B4 frowned at Lore. 

“Don’t worry about him, buddy,” Lore patted him on the shoulder encouragingly. “Come this time next year, we’ll have a sea of friends. Some other loser will have had a much worse birthday than Data’s by then.” 

Meanwhile, a few doors down, Geordi La Forge was leaning over the toilet in his room, retching as if his life depended on it. 

“Hurry up, nerd,” Tasha Yar snapped nearby, twirling his visor between her hands in her nervous excitement. “The results to the written section of the self-defense exam were posted today. I gotta see how much I beat everyone by.”

“Gee, thanks for the concern,” Geordi grunted. “Got anything more thoughtful to say again before I-“ He was cut off by his own gag reflex, and Tasha sighed. 

“Sure, sure. Happy birthday. There, that thoughtful enough for you? Now get whatever bad tuna you ate out of your system so we can get to class.” 

He groaned but after a couple of moments pushed himself to his feet. It was really his fault. He’d skipped too much school this year, and Tasha’s tough love was the only thing keeping the Academy from expelling his ass. 

Once he was up, with his visor back on and his bag in his hands, Tasha took the liberty of pulling him the entire way to class. Whether it was out of support for his lack of connection to the world around him or annoyance that he was taking so long, he ran into fewer walls and pedestrians than he supposed he would have left to his own devices.

“Great, we’re here, happy?” Geordi muttered, sliding his bag into his chair while Tasha rushed the board, eagerly checking the exam rankings. The professor listed their scores by Student ID number, so he decided he wasn’t going to bother looking for his own this morning. His surroundings were going in and out of focus enough without his squinting at lines of digits.

“Yes, I am,” Tasha mumbled, checking ID numbers from the very bottom of the board with satisfaction. “Now I get to see how much I crushed the rest of the class by.” 

“Can I at least have five minutes of complaining to my best friend now? Before you and your runner up are butting heads in the physical exam.” 

“Sure, buddy… we can celebrate another dumb year till your body breaks, just hold on a second-“ She stopped, eyes widening. “Shit, wait, no.” She checked a certain ID number again. “But that’s… SECOND PLACE? I GOT SECOND PLACE?” 

“You’ll get extra points from the physical exam anyway,” Geordi grunted. “There isn’t anyone in here who could beat you at that, so you’ll end up with the top score by a mile.” 

“That’s not the point!” Tasha roared suddenly, slamming her fists on his desk and nearly scaring him out of his seat. “I am good at ONE class in this damned academy, and if I’m going to be the best I’m going to be the BEST. Whoever number one is, I’m gonna pound them right off this campus!” 

“And… that will stop them from studying as hard next time?” Geordi wondered. 

“If they know what’s good for them.” 

The door to the classroom opened and shut quickly. The distinct sound of the metal door thunking against someone’s head attracted everyone’s gaze; no one ever heard that noise unless someone shut the door on someone on purpose.

Will Riker entered, a bit off-balance, behind a teary-eyed Deanna Troi. 

Tasha’s demeanor changed immediately, as it usually did whenever she noticed Deanna had entered the vicinity. She fiddled with her hands and took her customary seat beside Geordi before looking back with some concern as the small girl got into a muted shouting match with Will Riker. 

“I’m guessing you’ll be sitting with your girlfriend at lunch, then?” Geordi muttered, looking at his padd rather than at Tasha.

“Shut up. You know we’re not like that.” 

“She’ll want to vent to you later. So you’ll be there.” 

Tasha messed with the pencils on her desk. 

The professor entered the class, prompting everyone to take their normal seats and hurriedly finish their conversations. 

“Everyone, I trust if you wanted to see your scores on the written portion of the exam, you already checked,” Professor Glen said. “So we’ll go ahead and start our applied section. Every win adds two extra points to your score. Yes, you can push your score above one hundred percent. No, you cannot continue to compete past five wins, or ten points. Our competitors will go from the top of the list down, as they have in previous semesters. So, our highest score went to Deanna Troi-“ 

Geordi watched the color drain from Tasha’s face as a rather uncomfortable-looking Deanna searched her bag quickly for a hair tie to get her curls out of her face, before stumbling to the middle of the room. 

“And our second highest scorer, Cadet Tasha Yar.” 

Tasha slowly got to her feet. 

“Good luck pounding her off campus,” Geordi said, grinning. Tasha gave him a swift swat to the arm. He had a feeling he’d get worse for that when they were actually released from class, but he figured it was worth it. 

Tasha took her spot opposite Deanna like it was causing her physical pain. Deanna offered a nervous smile. 

“Well, no mystery who will win this one, huh?” Deanna said, under her breath so the professor wouldn’t hear. “We both know this isn’t my cup of tea. And it’s basically your specialty.”  
“It’s fine, Dee,” she breathed back. “I wouldn’t go all out on a girl like you.” 

Deanna’s smile vanished. “A girl like me?” 

Tasha fiddled with her hands again. “I… I didn’t mean...” 

“You can’t lie to me, Tasha,” Deanna reminded her. 

The professor blew the whistle, signaling they start. Tasha wasn’t paying attention to him, still trying to think of a way to rephrase her sentence. 

Suddenly, Deanna was very close to Tasha. Closer than she ever got. 

There was a swift, surprisingly strong pull at Tasha’s arm. She found herself on her back, and heard the bone in her upper arm crack. 

“Plus two points to Cadet Troi,” the professor said. “Cadet Yar, have someone escort you to the nurse’s office.”

Geordi was given this honor, but he didn’t dare breathe a word to his fuming friend the entire way. 

\--

As a freshman, Geordi had little chance to get into the practical classes he wanted. He did manage, however, to get into one hands-on engineering class meant for sophomores. It was the only class he had so far that wasn’t so boring he questioned his choice to join Starfleet Academy in the first place. 

He was momentarily distracted when the android brothers entered the classroom. The two older ones, he thought. He had followed Soong’s research and much of the controversy about their sentience long before enrolling in the academy. He had seen enough of their behavior to be sure they were both capable of typical humanoid emotion, which meant they couldn’t be the last model Soong had created, but that was all he assumed of them as individuals. Soong’s specs hadn’t described very much about their personality gauges, and the boys didn’t socialize much. 

He wouldn’t have thought twice of them except for their damned glowing. It was another one of those weird aspects his visor saw that no one else seemed capable of seeing. The glow was so bright it was hard for him to see their faces. If it weren’t for that glow, he might have been able to pair up with one or both of them on a group project to sate his curiosity, but it gave him a headache to look at them really fast. 

Geordi tried to refocus on his computer and his materials, pulling up the proper notes to pick up where they’d left off in their last class. It was difficult. The heat of the whirring machinery in the room did nothing to help his nausea. 

The professor entered the room and continued leading them through their work reconstructing their mini warp cores. Geordi noticed he was skipping many important aspects to a warp core actually functioning, but he assumed it was simplified on purpose. They were still in a lower level class, after all. No need to risk any of these kids who were just taking engineering as an elective blowing themselves up. 

It seemed one of the Soong brothers was in a mood to talk today, though, so the class got interruption after interruption without Geordi’s help. He was pointing out more than the skipped steps irking Geordi; he seemed to have a vested interest in letting the professor know how limited the human understanding of star travel was and all of the more efficient and effective ways each step could be carried out. Some of his suggestions were interesting, some outlandish. Some Geordi was certain would kill the average humanoid mid-attempt, and he couldn’t tell, from the constant smirk on the android’s face, whether he was aware of that or not. 

“Lore, an engine following those specifications would no longer support warp drive,” the professor said, tone growing almost as annoyed as the expressions Geordi saw on the other students’ faces. 

“That’s the point, sir. Transitioning away from warp drive is inevitable. At this rate, the use of engines could tear space apart in the current lifetimes of the humanoids in the Federation.” 

The professor pinched the bridge of his nose. “There is no research currently suggesting warp drive is causing any kind of dangerous side effects.” 

“Not that the Federation pays attention to.” 

“Class, continue to work on your projects for a few minutes,” the professor said, abruptly no longer speaking to this Lore kid directly. “I have something I must attend to, briefly.” 

He exited the class, Geordi assumed to go scream in a pillow somewhere. 

“Hey, brainbot,” one kid sneered, when they were alone. “Keep your thoughts to yourself next time. If you keep stalling the class we’re not gonna get credit, and some of us need this class to graduate.” 

Lore’s eyes narrowed. His brother seemed to have shrunk in his seat.

“Lay off, guys,” Geordi said, frowning. “If he wants to ask questions let him ask. It’s the professor’s responsibility to keep the class running.” 

“Shut up, visor,” the boy snapped back. “What, are you sticking up for them cause you wanna be one of them one day? You wanna go from having metal eyes to a metal body.” 

“You might want to watch your mouth,” Geordi growled.

“Or what? Blind freshman gonna fight me for his robot boyfriend?” 

Someone behind Geordi leaned over and whacked him in the back of the head, sending his visor right off his face and crashing with audible force against the floor. 

“Oh, you want to make this physical?” Lore asked, getting to his feet. 

The boy who’d been harassing them didn’t have a chance to vocalize the amused look on his face. Geordi had spun around and flung himself at the kid who’d attacked him from the back, thrashing his limbs wildly. He was obviously going for success over grace. 

“Hey, you’re gonna hurt him, calm down!” the first boy said, getting to his feet and rounding the table. Lore blocked his passageway, grabbing the front of his neck and lifting him with one arm, as if he was made of paper. 

“If you need to count on the blind freshman to calm down,” Lore hissed. “Maybe you shouldn’t fuck with him in the first place.” 

“Can’t you nerds take a little trash talk? I wasn’t being serious!” 

Unnoticed to the squabbling adolescents, B4 dropped to the floor and crawled beneath the table, silently retrieving the visor. 

It was probably a good thing he did, as despite Geordi’s protests, the professor did not stop to let him retrieve it when he entered the room and saw he and Lore attacking their fellow students. He escorted them both out of the class to have Academy police officers deal with them. 

\--

After speaking with the officers and the academy president, the boys were finally let off with a warning for their spotless previous records and exemplary grades. 

Once they were alone, Geordi found the nearest wall and get to feeling his way forward. Lore frowned.

“What are you doing?” 

“Going back to our class.” 

Lore stared blankly at him for a moment and said, “it’s over.”

“I figured. Doesn’t matter. It’s where my visor is.” 

“Kid… La Forge, is it?” Lore began, stepping up behind him. 

“Yes?”

“I thought you might want some h-“ 

“No, thank you,” Geordi cut back sharply. “I don’t need any help.” 

“You do realize you’re not even walking in the right direction.” 

Geordi cursed and turned around. 

Lore stood there awkwardly, not sure what he’d done wrong. His brothers were the ones who usually asked for clarification on social cues. 

“Um… are you sure you don’t want me to at least… tell you where to go? It’s not like I have to hold your hand or anything.”

“No offense, but you’ve done enough.” 

Lore bristled. “I’ve done enough? I’m not the one who knocked your fancy glasses off, am I?” 

“Well sticking up for you after you took up half the class yammering about how the professor was wrong somehow managed to make my shitty day even shittier.” 

“Lore! Mr. Geordi!”

B4 appeared, followed closely by Data. B4 went directly to Geordi, attempting to help direct him without asking as Lore had. Geordi flinched at the unwelcome touch, but this time said nothing. 

Lore turned to Data. “What do you want?” 

“B4 told me you were in trouble with Academy authorities. That you were violent. Have you been disabling your safety protocols again?” Data asked. There was no accusation in his tone, but Lore still averted his gaze. 

“I didn’t disable nothin’,” he muttered. “Go ahead, look at all the records. Nobody got hurt. The blind bandit over here caused more damage than I did. And trust me- if I did more than scare the kid, you’d know by now.” 

“If you care about our continued education here, you should be more careful,” Data said. “I assume since I have not received any angry notice from Mother, you have not received more than a ‘tap on the wrist’ for this incident.” 

“You ‘assume’ correct.” 

“Good. Cadet La Forge?”

Geordi groaned. “What? What do you want? I don’t even know you.” 

B4 cut in before Data could say anything. “Data’s my brother, like Lore! I found your visor and it was cracked. I couldn’t tell if it was too broken to work, so I took it to Data to see if he could fix it.”

“As this piece of technology is one of its kind, it was not difficult to find records of its existence and makeup,” Data said, holding out the visor. B4 swiped it from him eagerly and helped Geordi put it back on. 

“Thanks,” Geordi muttered shortly, pulling away from B4 as soon as he could see again. His gaze stopped and lingered on Data; the almost painful glow his visor emulated when he looked at the other two was more muted on him. It made it easier to actually look at him, to see the shape of his face and the complex signals coming from the rest of Soong’s famous design. 

Data was more of the beauty he had expected from his studies when he had first seen Lore and B4. He was momentarily distracted from his sulking. He almost wanted to take notes. 

“You gotta bone to pick with my brother now, punk?” Lore snapped. 

Geordi looked away as quickly as he could, face turning red. 

“Do not cause another altercation, Lore,” Data said. “Are my repairs to your visor satisfactory, Cadet La Forge…?” 

It would have been impossible for Geordi La Forge to slip away from three Soong-type androids without being noticed, but in the time it took Data to speak, Geordi was already turning a distant corner, attempting to quietly vanish.

“Let him go,” Lore growled. “You were right, Data. No one at this school’s gonna risk their stupid reps to hang out with us. I should have just let those kids beat him to a pulp.” 

“Lore, he still stood up for you,” B4 point out. “Maybe he’s just having a bad day.” 

“That is a likely assessment,” Data said. “His temperature was very high-“ 

“He was blushing, Einstein,” Lore interjected. 

“Before that, there were still physical signs of distress, beyond that the anxiety your activities could induce. It is most likely he was ill.” 

“He better not bring his ill ass back to me after this,” Lore snapped. “I have another class soon. See you guys back home.” 

\--

The rest of the day passed with little respite for Geordi. He felt a tad guilty for how he’d treated the Soong brothers, but it was difficult to care enough to apologize between being sick and having such a shitty day. It wasn’t like three perfect humanoid beings would care what he thought of them, anyways. 

He didn’t get much sleep that night before a pounding started on his door. More idiots who bullied him. These guys were much more regular and mean-spirited than the kids in his engineering class.

Except this time, without his permission, he heard the door slide open. Their computer programming nuts had finally figured out how to unlock his door, an accomplishment Geordi had been dreading since his first night here, when he’d been naïve enough to open the door for them himself. 

This birthday really was shit. 

Geordi had only managed to find his visor on his bedside table in the dark when someone else grabbed it, tearing it right from his fingers. He could smell sweat and alcohol as the group converged on him. He tried to stand up but someone shoved him back down. 

“Why are you doing this?” Geordi asked, as if he really thought there could be a good answer. “What is it about giving me grief that gives you any benefit whatsoever?” 

There were some mumbles between the peers he could only assume were scattered through his room right now. 

“Hey La Forge,” one of them said, as if struck with some genius. “You needed these super specs to get into this school- I bet you’d need them to find your way out, right? Guys, hold this for me.” 

There were several pauses, between which loud thuds of metal hitting skin could be heard. There was no pain, just laughing, so Geordi figured they were passing his visor back and forth. As if they needed a game of keep away to stop him, while he sat there helpless. The fire that had inspired him to run at his attacker this morning was out. He just wanted them to get this out of their systems and get out of his room. 

BRiiiing. BRiiing. BRRiiiing.

The fire alarm screeched, splitting his eardrums. 

“You’re such a troll, Rick, oh my god,” a girl said, giggling. “What is this, middle school? You’re gonna get expelled.” 

A knot formed in Geordi’s stomach. The boy probably wouldn’t get expelled for pulling the fire alarm once. Geordi, on the other hand, had been in a fight this morning. And it was illegal to stay in the building or use turbolifts during a fire alarm. Not only would he have to maneuver himself through student-filled hallways blind, he’d have to make it down stairs. 

“You guys, give me back-“ Geordi got to his feet, trying to demand his visor, but his virus hadn’t passed, and he got hit with a wave of nausea that took him to the floor. When he started vomiting, his peers only stopped to gleefully comment how disgusting he was before leaving the room. 

\--

The Soong brothers didn’t sleep, but in an effort to explain the eight hours a night he was not allowed to disturb Juliana, the family had convinced B4 that the time was traditionally used to dress comfortably, lay out on a soft surface, and watch seven to nine hours of TV or read in a process humans traditionally referred to as dreaming.

Naturally, B4 wasn’t pleased to find his brothers pulling him from his nineteenth dream cycle of “Tarzan” when the alarm started blaring.  
Lore’s pushing the boy forcefully down the hallway in his pajamas made it difficult for Data to explain, but eventually he conceded, following them sulkily down the hallway toward the staircase. 

Lore gave a frustrated sigh when, before they could be one of the last groups to reach said staircase, B4 stopped again. 

“What is it now?” Lore groaned. “I promise, you can finish Tarzan for the millionth time when this is over with, whether the school burns down or not.” 

“Mr. Geordi is going the wrong way,” B4 mumbled. His two younger brothers followed his gaze, to where Geordi was feeling his way along the wall.

“It appears he has lost his visor again,” Data said. “Perhaps he had an accident in the rush to leave for this drill?” 

“Sounds like a whole load of his problem,” Lore snarled. “Come on, we need to go.” 

“Cadet La Forge helped you in class today,” Data said. “If you really wish to make friends at this school, the least you could do is repay a favor.” 

“I tried to ‘repay his favor’ earlier, and he spat in my face,” Lore retorted. “I’ll pass, thanks.” 

He continued towards the staircase without looking back at his brothers. 

\--

Geordi wasn’t too proud to accept help this time, though. He was exhausted and upset, but he thanked Data and B4 quietly for their aid and allowed them to loop his arms around their shoulders as they led him through the halls and down the stairs. 

When they made it outside and settled on a bench, Geordi was hit by another wave of nausea. He felt the way to the back of his seat to vomit in the bushes, but he only dry-heaved. 

“There, there,” B4 mumbled awkwardly, patting Geordi’s back as he came to a shuddering stop. “It’ll be all right, Mr. Geordi.” 

“It’s just Geordi,” he sighed. “You’re B4, right?” 

“Huh? I thought you couldn’t see without your visor. Are you psychic?” 

“No, you just all kinda… sound different. Anyway, thanks again. To both you and your brother. I owe you one.” 

“You may count this as a ‘birthday present,’” Data said. 

Geordi turned his head towards the sound of Data’s voice. “Who told you it was my birthday?” 

“When I was looking for the specs for your visor, I came across your student profile.”

“Ah. Well, it’s not like it matters.” Geordi turned and slid into a normal sitting position. “For humans, birthdays are just another year closer to death.“

“LALALA,” B4 suddenly shouted, just a bit too loud for comfort, pressing his hands over his ears.

Geordi flinched. “What?” 

“Brother,” Data said. “Perhaps you should go see what has become of Lore?” 

“Yeah, right,” B4 said, already on his feet. “See you guys later.” 

Geordi frowned. “Was it something I said?” he asked, after B4 was out of earshot. 

“B4 does not care to think of human mortality. He had a rather difficult time with it when our father passed away and we had to explain it to him.” 

“Oh… I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Geordi said, instantly ashamed. “I was just trying to say… I didn’t do anything last year. I still didn’t do anything more significant than tinker with a few machines and read a few fantasy novels. The only difference the last year has really made in my life, in the grand scheme of things, is how close I am to dying. Kinda makes celebrating or making a big deal out of it seem silly, you know? Especially next to like, people like you and your brothers. In three hundred years, you guys will probably be doing things I can’t even imagine. You probably already are. And by then… maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll have made some kind of significant contribution to engineering. Maybe I’ll have descendants still running around, but no one who’ll remember my face. My being here, right now, is negligible. A year in the span of my life is negligible. So why celebrate my birthday?” 

Data was quiet for a moment, settling beside him on the bench. Geordi shifted uncomfortably when he felt the weak old bench move to accommodate him. He’d just felt bad about running B4 off. He hadn’t meant to try and start a philosophical conversation that was probably eons too simple for a guy like Data Soong to spend a day thinking about. 

And there was something immediately… different about Data, next to his brothers. Geordi couldn’t put his finger on it. It wasn’t the details of his design that made looking at him through the visor easier; Geordi could have drawn a diagram to explain that in his sleep. Though Data was the youngest brother, he seemed the most… mature? Maybe. There was something more reliable about him. Something more stable. It was less intimidating in one way and more intimidating in another. He tried to sit upright and listen harder, in case he missed something the boy said. 

“My brothers would typically argue that such a thought makes our birthdays less significant,” Data said. “We will likely live for centuries to come, into societies where none of this will matter. It is difficult to assign significance towards a numerical age when relative to most humanoids, we will most likely live several lifetimes. Though B4 likes to try and celebrate regardless.” 

“What about you?” Geordi wondered. “What do you think about it, when your brothers aren’t around?” 

From the pause, it seemed Data had to think about this. Geordi found himself fiddling with his hands, as Tasha did around Deanna, and cursed internally. 

“I believe assigning significance to any date is arbitrary and fleeting,” Data said. “But any being who can find joy in their life, even through something as simple as a holiday or anniversary, is not wasting their time. They are enhancing their experience in ways I can only imagine.”

“Ways you can only- oh,” Geordi began, then paused, realizing. “Soong didn’t give you an emotion chip.” 

“You know details of my design?” Data said, not seeming particularly disturbed. Geordi flushed anyway, horrified. 

“A little. Your father’s work is legendary in engineering circles, after all,” he admitted. “It’s interesting.” 

“If you are so interested, why have you not interacted with me or my brothers until now?” Data asked. “We are, as you put it, my father’s ‘work.’” 

“What? I’m not that much of a creep,” Geordi said. 

“I do not see what would have been creepy about that. You are interested in machinery, and we are machines,” Data pointed out. 

“You’re androids,” Geordi said, as if correcting him. “I don’t know… Medical students don’t just track down organic people to ask them how their organs function and cut an arm open to watch the blood flow. Wouldn’t it be weird if I was that way about you?” 

“It is weird that you think looking at the wiring of my arm and bloodletting a human being are comparable,” Data said, matter of fact. 

Geordi laughed. “I guess so. Sorry.” 

“Do not apologize. Though the thought is not normal, it is… refreshing.” 

Geordi grinned to himself, trying to think of something else to say. 

Loud shouts interrupted them. 

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow- please, stop-“ 

“Data,” Geordi said, preparing to get to his feet and leave. “What is that?” 

“It appears a young woman with a broken arm has pinned down a young man holding your visor,” Data said. “I do not know if we should intervene…”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Geordi said, relaxing. Of course, Tasha would have been looking for him by now. And noticed any thug who just happened to have his tech. 

“That’s right, assholes,” Tasha shouted. Her voice was getting closer. “Run from the blind guy you jacked and the girl who just beat your asses with one arm and rethink your life choices!”

Tasha helped Geordi get a hold of and reorient his visor, but let him put it on himself. 

“Thanks. You didn’t do anything you’ll get expelled over, did you?” Geordi checked.

“Those cowards won’t snitch to anyone,” Tasha said, unconcerned. She glanced at Data. “Which of the famous bags of bolts are you?” 

“Tasha,” Geordi frowned. 

“I am Data,” Data replied, unbothered as ever. 

Tasha held a hand out to him. “I owe you one. For getting my boy out of there. You’re good people.” 

Data accepted her handshake. He seemed to attempt a smile, but it didn’t look natural coming from him. “Thank you. Cadet La Forge was kind enough to assist my brothers earlier today. It was the ‘least I could do.’” 

“Don’t call me that,” Geordi said. “My name’s Geordi.”

Data glance at him. Once again he tried to smile. This time it looked a smidge more real. “Okay, ‘Geordi.’” 

Geordi’s soul nearly flew from his body. God damn was this one cute. 

Tasha squinted at Geordi, then her eyes went wide. “Holy shit, really? After all the shit you’ve given me about Deanna?” 

“Tasha, don’t.” 

Data looked between the two, confused, but Tasha waved him off, telling him not to worry about it. She would give Geordi a hard time in private, later, but anything was better than getting it out of her system right in front of the guy, so Geordi was grateful. 

He checked his watch, trying to give himself a moment to recover. “It’s midnight.” 

“Ah, a new day,” Tasha said, leaning against the bench where they sat. “Manage to get a good birthday in anywhere?” 

Geordi scowled. “Not at all.” 

“Was it at least a memorable one, then?” Data tried. 

Geordi glanced at him. He smiled a bit. “I guess so.”


End file.
